It’s a rainy & windy day… perfect for sharing some more photos from my recent soda firing! Lots of pots ready for my HOLIDAY HOME SHOW in two weeks! So now I just need to prep & price them all… as well as setting up all the shelves & decorating my place! The pottery party is in just two weeks!!!

Hard to believe we’re just two weeks away from my HOLIDAY HOME SHOW!!!… ‘cuz In my head, it should still be summer!? So mark your calendars now, make your holiday shopping lists & get ready to bring a friend! This is the biggest pottery show I do all year… with pottery in every room of my condo, all decked out for Christmas, food & drink in the kitchen and the ever-popular TIRED OF SHLEPPING SALE on the back porch!

Well, here it is… my soda kiln full of pots!

Plenty of shelves covered with pots of all shapes & sizes! Looks like it was a good firing… even without a top cone pack! Plenty of vibrant colors & good soda “glaze” coverage. Gearing up for my HOLIDAY HOME SHOW which is just a couple weeks away! How can that be?… it still feels like summer!!! More photos to come…

A great combination… an empty soda kiln & my studio cart FULL of glazed & wadded pots. Late Friday night I loaded the kiln with a LOT of pots to be soda-fired on Saturday. My rolling cart has to travel from my second floor studio down to the first floor kiln room… on a very rickety freight elevator. So I always add some “seat belt” straps of masking tape to help keep pots in their place on the trip down!

Today is NATIONAL FLUFFERNUTTER DAY!!!
A childhood favorite… and we can consider this as “carbo-loading,” right?!

My friends Keith & Julie recently moved for central Illinois to Ohio… and it looks like they finally got around to unboxing some of their pottery collection! What better way to “feel at home” than with a freshly-baked pineapple upside-down cake, fresh-cut roses from the garden & the warmth of a candle… and some of my stamped pottery to pull it all together!

This week in my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class, one of my students continued her “quest” for the perfect doughnut… oversized, wheelthrown & frosted with colored slip! Kelly made one last session and it turned into a vase with a bite out of it for the flower hole. Can’t wait to see where these go… although I keep telling her that I’ll take a full Baker’s Dozen please!!!

When the kiln door is finally unbricked, it’s always nice to take a step back, take a deep breath & admire the work for a second. Appreciating that the firing was a success… that I got some good colors throughout the kiln, and NOT a ton of blasted grayness! Enough admiring… now it’s time to start unloading layer by layer, shelf by shelf, pot by pot…

We had a surprise guest in my beginning pottery class Tuesday night! Nick came into class with a black duffel bag asking where he could stash it somewhere quite & clean. We put it under the wedging table… only after finding out that there was a four-week old puppy inside!!! My student Nick is a veterinarian and was at the vet clinic when someone found this cutie abandoned on the side of the road and brought him in. We all loved it… and told Nick that we now expect a different puppy in class each week!!! HA!!!

Looks like a beautiful breakfast in the making in Stevens Point. Flowers from the garden, a beautiful fruit salad and plenty of pottery to serve in style! Remember, homemade food always tastes better in handmade pottery!